General Education and Torah: Between Israel and America

The rabbi’s opening post

General Education and Torah: Between Israel and America

Posted on 25/9/2005

In a nearby thread, an important question arose that I have long been thinking of raising here. And although it is sociological in essence, in my opinion it has great educational importance (unlike sociological questions in general, with all due respect to RGS).

I would be glad if forum members living overseas could enlighten me (us) as well with relevant information.

As far as I know, there are striking differences between Torah education in the Holy Land and abroad (especially the United States, and perhaps for the sake of focus it is worth concentrating on that). I will list three of them (readers are invited to comment also on whether such differences exist at all, since this is only an impression), which of course are not independent of one another:

1. In the United States they are more successful in combining general education with a solid level of Torah learning. It is quite common to find a lawyer or another professional who is well versed in tractates and knows how to study in depth. In our Holy Land this generally neither succeeds nor is it common.

2. Within Modern Orthodox education, in the United States they succeed in producing more Torah scholars who have a fluent command of the entire Talmud. The modern Torah scholars in the Holy Land, to the best of my knowledge, are not at this level (few, if any, have the entire Talmud at their fingertips, and certainly not the Talmud studied in depth with commentators. Some of them, and certainly their students, do not even have such a goal at all). In an informal survey I conducted among several graduates of the Gush, I was told that those who have mastered the entire Talmud are all originally Americans (some of them even returned there to breathe a bit of impure air from the impurity of the lands of the nations—both their soil and their atmosphere).

3. In the United States there is no antagonism on the part of educated, modern people toward classical yeshiva-style learning. It seems that the crowd at YU also very much enjoy engaging in dialectical analysis through the accepted yeshiva methods. Even in the ‘Gush,’ the more Brisker-style scholars are usually Americans (as is their head of yeshiva, who is himself an exceptional Brisker figure in the landscape of modern Israeli yeshiva heads). The Modern Orthodox Israeli student requires a constant struggle in order to engage in dialectical analysis by these methods.

I have a few intuitions about the source of these differences. I would say that American religiosity is simpler and more natural. Even when people rebel and introduce revolutionary innovations, it seems that this is done and received (or not received) in a more natural way. Here in the Holy Land, everyone wrestles and hesitates over these matters and agonizes over them deep inside. I feel that everyone here is entangled, even those who present an apparently conservative and self-assured façade.

Is it true that even the Americans’ positive attitude toward education is not because of the value of education itself (which is more characteristic of Europe), but because of “livelihood” (not in ideological declarations, but in practice)?

Somehow I have the feeling that Americans live more comfortably with contradictions. They are more understanding, for example, of a prayer quorum of Orthodox lesbians in ‘Beit Hillel,’ and the like, and at most simply do not join it if it does not appeal to them. Israelis, by contrast, insist more on ideological consistency. They struggle more with contradictions and try to resolve them, and so on.

Israelis are more “tense” and less relaxed. This is part of the Middle East and of the situation in which we find ourselves. True, neuroticism is ostensibly a distinctly American characteristic (the Protestant thesis), but it seems to me that this relates mainly to economic life (= Protestant achievement-orientation) and not to ideology (which is not directly connected to achievement-orientation).

I should note that in my opinion there is also a certain seepage of this mentality/culture to us. To the delight of many of us (not including me, at least with regard to most things), there is also import and not only export (of benighted conservatism).

The importance of the discussion is clear. There is an attempt here to think more systematically about why the combination of education and scholarship fails in the Land of Israel, and perhaps even to draw lessons from this (the lessons, of course, also depend on ideology, but this is not the place to elaborate). What rests on a different cultural substrate, and what can be imported or exported because it depends only on ideology and not on inherent differences.

For example, if a Torah institution is opened and run by people with an “American” ideology, which sees both education and Torah as positive values, will the success also be similar? Are there not such institutions in Israel, and do they all succeed? Is it better to begin this from a Haredi foundation and develop general education (as in ‘HaYishuv’ and ‘Ma’arava’), or from a national-religious foundation and develop Torah study more intensively?

I would be glad to hear your esteemed opinions: are these differences indeed real, and what is their root?

Source (forum “Stop Here, People Think”): https://forums.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=1588475